16 December 2024

What to expect in 2025 - Louder edition

In summary

• With 2024 drawing to a dramatic close, Louder’s specialists look ahead to 2025 and what the new year may have in store for digital marketers.
• We’ve broken our predictions into our main specialist areas
• Get in touch with your Louder team to discuss any topics that spark your curiosity

Programmatic

The programmatic landscape will continue to evolve and change in 2025. As the shifting sands of third party cookie deprecation begin to settle, we will see purpose driven buying through further supply consolidation in the form of curation, data alliances and more sophisticated use of (consented) first party data sets. 

As we move on from the third party cookie there will be a need for more consistent identifiers to plug the gaps left behind in both a targeting and measurement context. Improved supply side data integrations will provide more pre-qualified impressions that ease the burden on bidders (DSPs). The outcome of this will mean agencies and brands will move closer into supply side platform based partnerships, enabling further buying controls and opening the door to more audience capability.

The advances in the retail media sector remain to be seen within the programmatic sphere, but what’s clear is that the programmatic pipes will be where many retail offerings will start to activate offline audiences in 2025. Retailers will look to make a land grab data alliances looking to particular DSPs to advance retail closed loop measurement and buying.

Search

The rapid AI integration in search will drive a fundamental shift in how businesses and media agencies plan their strategies, allocate resources and deliver results.

In terms of SEO and SEM strategy adjustments, some businesses are already reporting a decline in organic traffic^[1] due to AI Overviews providing direct answers without users clicking through to websites.

In 2025, businesses will need to start analysing what drives success for their specific audience within the search landscape. This involves researching effective strategies, identifying content gaps, and gaining a deep understanding of how AI processes and prioritises information. From there, they can craft more comprehensive, frequently updated and authoritative content specifically optimised for AI summarisation and visibility in AI-driven search experiences.

We may start to see a strong budget shift to SEM to compensate for lost organic traffic.

Businesses that can balance SEO (building high-quality content) and SEM (investing in targeted paid campaigns) will have a competitive advantage, leveraging both channels to capture attention and drive conversions.

With the recent social media ban for children under 16 passed^[2] in parliament, advertisers may shift their focus to Search advertising as a way to reach younger audiences. Unlike social media platforms, Google Search remains accessible to users of all ages, as it is not classified as a social media platform. Reports suggest that Google sales reps have allegedly already advised advertisers to target the “unknown” user category ^[3], which likely includes teens. This change will likely lead to increased investment in Search as advertisers adapt to the new regulations.

Creative

There has been an emphasis on the importance of creative in advertising over the past few years and that is not going anywhere in 2025. Creative is more relevant than ever but, there will be massive changes to the traditional methods of ideation and creation via the technological advancements of AI.

The reality is that we need to learn how to work with, and incorporate, these new technologies into our roles. Creatives, and digital marketers, should be leveraging AI to complete more repetitive tasks so they can focus on the deep thinking work.

While there are numerous benefits, there are also complications particularly around copyright with an Australian parliamentary committee recently recommending laws to mitigate the detrimental impacts of AI ^[4] on the creative industry (and its human work force).

Video will once again be the format of choice for marketers, with the aim to create an emotional, personal and authentic connection. While short form has reigned supreme in 2024, long form video content looks to make a resurgence as brands seek to connect with their target audiences through storytelling.

Since we’ve spent the past few years preparing for a cookieless world, brands now have lots of first party data. It’s time to use it better, build clever creative strategies and deliver more personalised creative, in turn, fostering the trust and engagement that consumers need.

Privacy and governance

The first tranche of the privacy bill passed in September was weaker than expected. With the federal election less than a year away, the government focussed its attention (and the media’s) to the recently passed social media ban for children under 16 (3). However, for companies who consequently put privacy measures on hold, the regulator issued a stern warning last month that policing, fines and infringement notices are on the way over the use of pixel data without consent. Companies will face fines of up to $330,000 before further official reform acts are agreed.

2025 will see increased dialogue over both privacy reforms and the children’s social media bill as both start to roll out with consequences. We can expect some human rights challenges over the social ban, as currently seen in Florida, and equally significant will be how marketers react. It’s likely the most impacted will be teen-focussed brands that work with influencers who have large followings on these social media sites.

As consent around data usage takes centre stage, we can expect organisations to focus on how they can manage this. A recent study by Mi3 indicated that only 15 of the top 100-ASX listed companies have consent management in place. The problem facing companies is the complexity around managing data in so many different systems and figuring out exactly when and what a user may have consented to.

As the second tranche of privacy reforms roll in next year, this is a key area where marketers and other teams need to come together to find the right solution for their business and customers.

Measurement and analytics

In 2025, businesses will continue to invest in server side tagging and explore CDP-lite functionality (Customer Data Platform) as they continue to see a lack of measurable and observable conversions. If audiences are giving their permission to be tracked, it’s imperative that brands endeavour to understand them at a deeper level. A CDP-lite solution will be a way for business to dip their toes in the water of CDP like functionality without having to invest at scale.

With the rapid rise of AI, AI tools will start to integrate with analytics tools to help businesses find insights from their data with relative ease. Effectiveness will rely on a robust and accurate tracking set up.

Privacy related changes in the Australian market will probably arrive in the late half of 2025. This will see opt-in consent banners becoming a requirement for business.

Apple may throw a spanner in the works with clever updates to ITP, which could impede sharing of hashed PII. The use of hashed PII will be further questioned as an alternative solution to click IDs and curtailed cookie lifespans. But what lies ahead for hashed PII? If hashed PII is PII will there be careful regulation carved out around it particularly for sensitive categories like health?

CRM integrations (not just Salesforce) and tools to make integration easier are also on the horizon. This would help with onboarding insights to Google Ads, leading to improved ad bidding on PMax and Demand Gen type campaigns

On a personal note, we hope to see substantial improvements in the ever evolving Google Analytics front end reporting interface to make it easier to use and draw out key insights. There will be more tools in the market, such as Adobe Content Analytics, aiming to make extracting insights from data easier.

Engineering

Generative AI has had an explosive entry to the world in the last few years with the likes of OpenAI and Google releasing increasingly powerful models as time goes by. However, with the substantial rise of generated content on the internet, and consequently the training datasets used for these AI models, we anticipate the improvements to these models will begin to plateau in 2025.

Additionally, it’s likely that more alarming partnerships will begin to form between leading AI companies and other entities, such as the development of AI powered assault drones by OpenAI and Anduril. The forming of these partnerships brings into question the global legislation around the use of AI and where we draw the line at what is ethical when using it.

On a more positive note, expect wider adoption of memory safe languages as companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft invest heavily in migrating existing infrastructure. As a result of this, there will be more first party support for these languages in cloud environments, with the development of client libraries for cloud environments to help integrate these languages better.

Resources

[1] ‘Marketers are unprepared for what is coming’: How Google’s AI search overhaul affects organic SEO for brands – and what to do about it, Mi3 June 2024

[2] Australia passes social media ban for children under 16, Reuters November 2024

[3] Report: Google encouraged advertisers to target teens on YouTube , Search Engine Land August 2024

[4] Parliamentary committee recommends ‘laws to stop the theft of Australia’s creative and media work by AI developers’, Mumbrella November 2024